In 2021, Zaam Arif, a Pakistani American artist based in Houston, Texas, got a call from The New Yorker. The magazine was preparing to publish another Pakistani American, the writer Daniyal Mueenuddin, who shot into the literary firmament with his highly acclaimed debut collection of stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, in 2009. Then, like a passing comet, Mueenuddin had all but disappeared from the public eye. And now, a decade later, he was ready to emerge from his hibernation with a brand-new novella called Muscle, scheduled to appear in the prestigious magazine. The New Yorker wanted Arif to read and respond to the story through his art.
“I wasn’t familiar with Mueenuddin’s work at the time,” Arif, 25, says on a video call from his studio in the US. “But as I went through Muscle, I saw so much of myself in it.” As he read on, Arif began to make a few sketches on the side, based on his initial reactions. The New Yorker loved these roughs and commissioned him to illustrate the story.
